History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio, Part 31

Author: Williams Brothers
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 443

USA > Ohio > Lake County > History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio > Part 31
USA > Ohio > Geauga County > History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio > Part 31

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As one of the executive of the district, Mr. Phelps' rare business capacity, executive ability, fine address, and power to deal with and manage men, were of the greatest service. Belonging to no clique or ring, possessed of qualities that preclude his ever being connected with or influenced by such associations, to Gov- ernor Dennison and himself is mainly due the great success of the commissional government of the district, hastily devised by Congress as a temporary expedient, but which, in their hands, became so efficient and popular as to meet the approval of Congress and the people of the district, and became, by a recent law, the perma- ment government of the capital. The President, properly estimating the services of Captain Phelps in this position, re-appointed him to the longest term of the civil commissioners, and his colleagues elected him president of the board. The place is one of great usefulness, and of honorable ambition.

He is completing a beautiful residence at the capital, cherishes a warm attach- ment to Chardon and Geauga, and keeps alive all the memories of his early life. He retains his old passion for wildwood sports and adventure, has pursued every variety of game in every quarter of the globe, and still manages to find brief relapses into this old life in the forests and streams of the mountainous region of the upper Potomac, regarding Washington as his final home.

GENERAL HALBERT E. PAINE.

The Paines are honorably mentioned in Bloomfield's " History of Norfolk County, England, in 1316," from whom they trace their descent. Of these, Stephen, the first of that name, migrated to Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1635. His son Stephen went to Indian Seekouk, and changed its name to Rhehoboth. The fourth Stephen removed to Pomfret, Connecticut, and fought in the old colo- nial wars,-was at Louisburgh. His son Stephen pushed to East Windsor, and served in the Revolution,-saw the surrender of Burgoyne. His son Eleazer was born in time to be a drummer-boy in a Connecticut regiment, and drummed to good purpose. When that was over he married Anna Elsworth, and pushed off through the woods to Ohio in 1803, built his cabin on the site of Painesville, and gave it his name. Sons had they,-Hendrick E., Franklin, Charles C., and Eleazer,-men inclined to dominate their fellows; and, with their collateral Paines 'and following, in the old days before the division of Geauga, they made up the

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HISTORY OF GEAUGA AND LAKE COUNTIES, OHIO.

Paine party, which sometimes controlled and for many years largely influenced the county and Reserve. There was martial blood in the Paines. They not only fought in the old wars, the War of 1812, but furnished a large number of colonels and generals for the militia in time of peace. In the last war the Geauga Paines produced two distinguished major-generals,-the subject of this sketch, and his cousin, Eleazer A., who was a graduate of West Point.

Eleazer, Jr., wedded Caroline Hoyt, of Chardon, on the 2d of November, 1824. She was a daughter of Judge Noah Hoyt, and sister of Sylvester W. Hoyt, for many years one of the most prominent men of the old county. The Hoyts were from Danbury, Connecticut, and the old judge was one of the earliest settlers of Chardon, and deserves a sketch. The Paine grandsons could furnish columns of the most graphic and laughable anecdotes of him, in which the grand- mother, a woman of great wit, would largely figure.

Halbert E., oldest son of Eleazer and Caroline, was born at Chardon, Febru- ary 4, 1826. Eleazer Paine was a merchant and very successful business man at Chardon, and died at the early age of thirty-seven, leaving Halbert E., George E., James H., and Caroline Paine. Of these, the daughter became the wife of Eli Bruce, and died within a year or two after her marriage. The others survive. The father was supposed to be rich, and the estate was quite equal to the educa- tion of the children. Halbert was early destined for a learned profession, and educated with care; was at several of the best academical schools. He evinced unusual ardor in his studies, and possessed that emulation which aimed at the first place, which his parts and industry always secured.

He entered the Western Reserve College at the commencement of the academ- ical year 1841, and graduated with the class of 1845; not only the first of his class, but he was always esteemed as the first scholar ever educated at that insti- tution. He was now nineteen years of age, tall, well made, and with more than the usual good looks of the Paines, a race distinguished for personal advantages.

After leaving college he spent a year in Virginia, engaged as a teacher, travel- ing and studying the country, acquiring a knowledge of it found useful in the campaigns in which he bore so conspicuous a part in his riper manhood.

On his return to Ohio he entered the law-office of Phelps & Riddle, at Chardon, and pursued his studies with his usual ardor. On his admission he went into the office of Hitchcock, Wilson & Wade, at Cleveland, to perfect himself in the practice. This was in 1849.

On the 15th of September, 1850, he was joined in marriage with Eliza L. Brigham, daughter of Harvey Brigham, of Windham, Portage county. The attachment was said to have commenced in his college days. The bride was esteemed one of the most beautiful and accomplished young ladies of a wide circle, and the union, by the numerous friends of the parties, was regarded as fortunate and happy. The only offspring of this marriage, Miss Lizzie Paine, is greatly esteemed and admired in the society circles of Washington.

The young lawyer practiced in Cleveland and Painesville until 1857, and although he did not secure a large practice, he was justly regarded as a rising man of much promise, and that in a profession where twenty per cent. is a large estimate of the successful. The bar of northern Ohio was at that time large and able, and the competition sharp. In 1857, Mr. Prince removed to the city of Milwaukie. He found there a large, influential, and growing German population, and at once turned his attention to their language, which he readily mastered, and spoke with the facility of a native, addressing them, and juries, if need be, with the ease of a Heidelberg student, although I never understood that he became a pro- ficient in lager beer and sour wines. His success at the Milwaukie bar was assured. For some time before the war he was a partner of Carl Schurz. Then the war came. The President issued a proclamation for seventy-five thousand volunteers to enforce statutes of the United States. To the people it was a call from Heaven to enforce the laws of God, and five hundred thousand responded.

Among the earliest to offer was Halbert E. Paine. When first commissioned he served for a month as quartermaster of the Second Wisconsin. His fitness for command was at once apparent, and in May, 1861, he was placed at the head of the Fourth, which, under his command, soon acquired a high reputation for discipline, steadiness, and bravery, and was esteemed among the most effective of the western troops. With ardor and impatience he went forward in July. On the route a railroad company hesitated and higgled about prices. He seized a train and locomotives and went forward and joined the hard-fighting, hard-fortuned army of the Potomac. His modesty, hesitancy to assert himself, which had retarded his advance at the bar, disappeared in the army. He could never be assuming and arrogant, but he was a natural commander and leader of men in war. His fine qualities came out at once ; a tender, lovable comrade, full of the chivalry and dash of the soldier, tempered with the thoughtfulness, sagacity, and responsibility of command, his superiors readily recognized his merits, while his modesty and courtesy saved him from the envy and jealousy of the men of his own rank. I can only glance at his career in the field. The first year of the war was full of

inconsequent action. The fall of 1861 saw him in the command of a brigade in eastern Virginia. From November till February, 1862, with his regiment he was stationed at Patterson's Park, Baltimore. On the 19th of February he went with his regiment to Newport News; from thence to Ship Island, March 8, the day before the raid of the " Merrimac." The next move was on New Orleans, where his regi- ment and the Thirty-first Massachusetts, under Butler, were present, and wit- nessed-all they could do-the dashing passage of the forts by Farragut, when they landed, May 1, 1862, and took possession of the town. This region of sun, swamp, and malaria was henceforth to be the theatre of his labors as a soldier.

On the 8th of May he was sent up the river on the first of the ineffective ex- peditions against Vicksburg.

While at Baton Rouge, the capital, his regiment was quartered in the State- House. Sitting one day at the desk of a member, in the hall of the House of Representatives, Colonel Paine employed a leisure moment with the contents of the drawer, and was greatly amused to find a proposition of Samuel P. Hopson, a former citizen of Munson, Geauga County, in the colonel's childhood, to construct a gun of especial death-dealing quantities to the northern hordes. The attempt on Vicksburg was attended with many small affairs, but the place was reserved to demonstrate the generalship of Grant. A part of the summer of 1862 was a period of special annoyance and oppression to Colonel Paine, growing out of the unfortunate temper and views of duty of his immediate superior of the old army, General Williams, an officer of courage and ancient views. There were a large number of colored servants permitted to officers' quarters on shipboard and in camp, quite as many hangers-on of that color as were useful. While up the river at Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, and other points, very considerable accessions were made to this class. The officers and soldiers of the north at that time had not learned to distinguish between their older followers and these recent acquisi- tions, and they doubtless carried down the river a large number of escaping slaves. The masters and their agents followed. The policy of the war then was to put down the Rebellion, if it could be done, without injury to slavery ; but in any event to protect the rights of the master. On the approach of the slave-hunters, Colonel Paine refused to permit them to enter his camp in search of their chattels. On application to General Williams, he issued an order to Colonel Paine, then commanding a brigade, to place all the colored people outside his lines. This would expose them all to certain capture. The colonel refused to obey; the general reiterated ; the colonel remained firm. The general ordered his ar- rest, but the colored people remained in camp. The colonel took a position behind a recent act of Congress on the subject which did not fully cover him. The articles of war required that charges be preferred in eight days. No charges were preferred, and the matter hung all summer. Meantime the second attempt on Vicksburg was to be made with all arms. Colonel Paine was the most efficient officer in General Williams' command, and he issued an order modifying his arrest. When the troops were formed in line of battle, the colonel was to resume his sword and command; with the repulse of the enemy he was to drop his sabre and truncheon of command, and be a prisoner ad interim.

Two or three incidents occurred on the expedition, showing the eminent ab- surdity of this state of things. On the return to New Orleans, Colonel Paine reported the case to General Butler, preferred charges against General Williams, demanded charges against himself, and a trial. Meantime General Williams was killed in a rebel attack on Baton Rouge, when a summary order from General But- ler relieved Colonel Paine of his irksome position, and placed him in command of the army of Baton Rouge. At Vicksburg the land forces saw little service, but witnessed the active operations of the gunboats, the exploits of the rebel ram, and many exciting incidents. The day of Vicksburg was again postponed.

Colonel Paine and Captain Phelps-then Admiral Davis' flag-officer-were Chardon boys together, and had not met since those far-off days. The colonel knew his old playmate was on the fleet below the town, and inquired for " a young officer by the name of Phelps." He remembered him as a rollicking boy of six- teen or eighteen, while Phelps thought of the colonel as a tall slip of a lad of twelve or thirteen. The surprise of the Geauga boys was beyond measure, meet- ing there on the flag-ship, in the Mississippi, under the embattled heights of Vicksburg; one a grave, already gray, officer of forty, a wanderer on every sea, and under every known sky, and the other a tall, dark, striking leader of a brigade of western soldiers. The recognition was followed by a hearty burst of laughter at the vanished illusion of years, as they recalled old boy memories of the cherished Chardon days.

While in command of the forces at Baton Rouge, the rebel General Breckin- ridge lay near, with an army of ten thousand men. Paine fortified, held the place, and compelled the enemy to retire. In the fall, Banks succeeded Butler in command, and directed a movement against Port Hudson. On Paine's approach to the place, an incident occurred, showing the perfection of drill capable

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of being reached by the horse. On the march, in a dark night, the general's horse, at the head of his column, suddenly came to full halt. The thing was inexplicable to his rider until, on inquiry, he found he had been trained in the artillery, and at the instant caught a bugle-call to halt, sounded more than a mile in the rear, and so faintly that the general did not detect it. The place was fortified, and an immediate attack was contemplated. Paine's Brigade approached under cover of the darkness, and bivouacked in close order near the fortification. The general and staff lay down, with the brigade standard pitched at their heads. A soldier learns to sleep at once, and soundly, even under the roar of battle.

At eleven o'clock a staff-officer of General Banks made his way to head- quarters, hastily delivered an order, and galloped off. What it was no one knew. It was to advance or retire. No mortal heard or could tell which. The general construed with the instincts of a gallant soldier, and ordered an advance. As soon as the force was in motion the aid, who was still near enough to discover it, returned and repeated the order. It was to withdraw. The attack was not made, and Port Hudson, like Vicksburg, was yet to be more famous. Ere withdrawing from the neighborhood, General Paine was sent to observe the rebs at Urchom village, where he remained for some time.

Then followed the first Red River expedition, in which Paine's Brigade had its full share of the marching fatigue and fighting. In April, 1873, Paine suc- ceeded Emery in the command of the Third Division, and Banks' command was called the Nineteenth Corps. From Alexandria he was ordered to march over- land upon Port Hudson, against which a final effort was to be made by the corps alone,-scarcely twelve thousand strong. Grant, who was about to demonstrate finally against Vicksburg, invited Banks' co-operation. This would be to un- cover the lower Mississippi. He then crossed the river and commenced the bril- liant campaign which ended in the capture of the city on the 6th of July. Port Hudson, on the left bank below, was the next most important point on the lower Mississippi. Strongly and regularly fortified, with forts, outworks, and rifle-pits, beyond which were abatis-work, felled trees, and other entanglements, protecting the whole land-front. The forces, though quite inadequate, took up positions, 80 as to completely invest the place by the 23d of May. Weitzel formed the right, on the north, or upper side; next came Grover; then Paine and his Third Divi- sion ; farther to the left, and below, Augur, with T. W. Sherman, forming the left on the river. Farragut was on the river with six or eight gunboats, most of them below. He had already made the splendid run of the formidable batteries, which brought on an all-night furious cannonade, resulting in the burning of the gunboat " Mississippi."

On the 27th of May the first general assault was made, intended to be simul- taneous. Paine and all the right pushed in at ten A.M., the hour, while Augur and Sherman did not commence till two P.M. It was a day of awful carnage. I can only follow the personal fortunes of my hero. Never was more determined and heroic fighting,-our soldiers in the open field, so far as the enemy's abatis and other devilments left it open, advancing against quite an equal number of trained soldiers behind regular works. All day long, in face of a relentless fire, Paine's rapidly-diminishing division made a steady advance, eating the way, and devoured as they went, forcing the enemy from their rifle-pits, behind their out- works, and finally behind the more formidable fortifications. Foot by foot, and finally inch by inch, and where merciful darkness finally found him, there, amid his dead and dying soldiers, slaughtered horses, and the wreck and waste of a murderous day, he lay, clinging with a death-grip to the land he had won, within three hundred yards of the forts. Here, during the night, he brought up cotton bales, shielded with raw-hides to prevent their taking fire, with which he covered the front of his torn and bleeding line. All the next day, and all the days, amid the festering stench of dead and unburied men and horses, fighting, digging, dying, he slowly worked his way forward. Not a head was raised above the frail movable barrier that was not marked; not a rebel head was lifted above the parapet that was not a target. On the 10th of June, at three A.M., a general advance was made, so as to secure an attacking distance from which the final assault should be launched. The movement was detected and defeated.

The sufferings of the enemy were fearful. Fighting behind works the casu- alties were not so great, but provisions grew scarce. First mules and then rats, while no minute's rest day or night was permitted to them. The 14th of June was the day for the final effort. At dawn of an intensely warm day, General Paine's Division, two regiments in line, preceded by skirmishers, and followed by a column, advanced to the assault, under a murderous fire of all arms. The line rushed forward, carried an angle, entered the works, and was nearly annihilated. So fearful was the hail of lead and iron that the flanks, overawed, recoiled and went to cover. The general himself, at the head of the column, sprang forward to restore the line, and, in a voice heard over the fierce din of battle, called his soldiers again to their feet. His tall form, attitude of command, marked the leader, and concentrated the rebel fire. "Shoot that damned curly-haired officer !"

was heard from the rebel works. The command that would have hurled the fiery mass of northern soldiery forward was cut short. A minie-ball shattered the bones of the left leg below the knee, and the heroic leader went to earth. His fall and the devouring fire of the enemy sweeping every inch compelled a recoil of the assaulting force behind its defenses. This was the result everywhere. The works were not carried. What the result might have been in Paine's front had he stood five minutes longer can only be surmised. The place was surrendered on the 8th of July, two days after the fall of Vicksburg. The Mississippi was won, the Confederacy sundered.

General Paine fell near the rebel works,-so near, in fact, that he escaped death or capture. Some of the soldiers who escaped were near him at the casualty, and knew that he was not killed, and the rebels were near enough to discover the great anxiety on account of some very important officer left on the field. They saw him, heard his voice, and knew pretty near where he lay. Might easily have seen him had one of them been permitted for a moment to get on to the rampart. At the short range the old sharp practice with the rifle was resumed, and ruled the day. A sortie would have been fatal to the party making it. The showing of any part of the person often uncovered death. The shattered limb doubled under the general as he fell. He knew that inflammation and swelling would soon follow. A wounded soldier was near enough to give him a pocket-knife, with which he cut and removed the boot. He forgot the drawer-strings until too late, and suffered excruciatingly in consequence. The ground was an old cane-field, and reaching up over his head, he grasped the stubs of cane and drew himself around so as to have the protection of the hilled-up earth. The rebels, with their atten- tion to the spot, poured hundreds of ineffective shots in his immediate vicinity during the day. As the sun mounted up and burned his upturned face, he cau- tiously pushed his cap up over it, which drew the rebel shots. His thirst became intolerable, and a wounded soldier passed him a canteen of water. This received a minie-bullet through it while the general held it over his mouth. The slow, burning hours dragged on, with the fierce sun glaring on his unprotected form, and the air a few feet over him constantly cut with the hissing, pinging bullets, or shattered with heavy shot and shells, while ribald taunt, shout, and bravado were exchanged backward and forward over him by the near combatants.

He was the object of the most devoted love of his old soldiers, and more than one lost his life in the attempt to succor him. Of the day he kept no note. At one time a desperate and fatal effort was made to rescue him. A voice reached him that two men would rush up with a stretcher to bear him off. He must be ready. He shouted back a peremptory order forbidding it. The rush was made. Two devoted soldiers rushed up, threw a stretcher to his side, and fell dead at his feet pierced with a score of bullets. He had periods of merciful unconsciousness. Finally the fierce, slow sun sank. The cool airs of evening fanned the field of the dead and dying, dew descended, and small insects piped their tiny notes in the subsiding din of the awful day. Night and darkness and a comparative cessation of arms came together. At about ten that night, Colonel Kimball, of one of the Massachusetts regiments, with a small party of soldiers stole up, rescued, and carried him off in the darkness. Through the enemy's country he was carried to New Orleans and placed in the hospital of Hotel Dieu, under the charge of a skillful surgeon of the enemy. Here he was found by his ever-faithful wife. A glance of the surgeon's eye showed the hopelessness of saving the limb. He was in no condition for amputation. Ere that was reached came a hemorrhage of the wound; an attempt to take up the artery failed, followed by another. It was taken up at the thigh and again broke away, and then came amputation. Three hemorrhages in thirty-six hours. The splendid physique and vitality given him by his parents, an active life of purity and sobriety, and his thirty-seven years carried him through it all, and he returned to Milwaukee in July. Here he was the strong, brave, athletic, handsome man, a fragment, a maimed cripple. True, he had been made a brigadier-general and was brevetted a major-general " for conspicuous gallantry" on the stricken field of the 27th of May, where his bril- liant handling of his men and splendid courage and conduct were the admiration of both armies, and the impression he then made had been greatly strengthened by his pluck and qualities as a commander since. But to become a fraction ! It was not in human nature-man nature-not to repine, to deeply deplore it. What though it consecrated him to a deeper and tenderer admiration, stamping him with the coinage of battle, one of the bravest, so that all the world should hail him with acclaim, and forever make him, his person and fame, sacred ?- the loss was to be forever regretted.

Then came a far bitterer thought. He had tested himself in every capacity of a soldier but one, and knew that he had everywhere equaled the best. He was thirty-seven, with a major-general's commission gloriously won, feeling that he had the qualities and capacity for high command. He had won the rank and place that entitled him to be trusted with it. He dropped his eyes sadly to the fragment of his limb, and sighed to think that it might bar the way. Sad and fatal pre-

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monition ! He never again led the indomitable Third Division. The old Fourth Wisconsin, whom his hand had fashioned to the perfection of American soldiership, were never again, with the old flag, to pass him in review, rally under his voice, or follow him in the heady charge. When one remembers his splendid military qualities, the position he had won, the state and extent of the war, which was to continue nearly two years longer, one greatly regrets that he was not continued in the field.

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History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio, Part 31

Author: Williams Brothers Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Number of Pages: 443

Author: Williams Brothers
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 443